Last One Standing
by Cat and Fiddle
Summary: I'm the last one standing and I don't understand what happened to us. [a series of oneshot drabbles]
1. Ring

_**Falling Apart**_

I don't really understand what happened, but Shikamaru explained it to me once.

He said that, from the very beginning, shinobi are falling apart. From the second a child is born to a ninja family, they begin breaking.

Because a shinobi's life is never pleasant.

I know that.

I know that really well.

Most of us grow up with only one parent, and those are the lucky ones. Quite a few of us never even meet our parents, but those are still the lucky ones; Sasuke and Iruka knew their parents before their parents were killed. Sasuke had to watch it happen.

He's not the only one; most of us have seen someone die with our very own eyes before we reach chuunin, and half as many have killed someone before then. We all grow up with secrets and we're all messed up.

Gaara had the Shukaku, Sasuke had his older brother. Sakura had an inner self, Shikamaru had abusive parents. Shino had insects crawling beneath his skin.

Shikamaru once speculated, over a curl of smoke from his cigarette, that we were made to fall apart.

He had a point. By the time we're ten we know that many ways to kill a person silently, in their sleep. By the time we're ten they've taught us twice as many poisons and their affects. By the time we're ten we can throw razor sharp weapons with deadly precision.

Actually, most of us know all that long before we're ten.

He told me we're only tools. Said that that's why protecting the village and following the Hokage and orders is ingrained into our heads the second we're born, until we chant it in our sleep.

I reckon that I'm the last one alive now because I never gave in to that stupid idea. But I'll never be sure, 'cause I'm the last one of us still here and I still don't understand what happened, and now I don't have anyone to ask.

But really, I don't think anyone has ever understood what was happening to us.

Except that we were falling apart.


	2. A

**_Children_**

Sometimes I'll sit at my desk in the Hokage office with my head in my hands for hours, staring at the grains in the wood, or maybe at an old mission report. A lot of the time, I'm thinking about what happened to all of us; maybe why, maybe when, maybe how... maybe what's next.

I mean, even if it makes my head hurt, and even if it makes my face wet with tears, if I think about it long enough, my stupid, dead-last brain will get it, right?

There are lots of reasons we fell apart, why we went insane, but too many to sort them all out, so I think about it person by person. Peer by peer- friend by friend.

Ghost by ghost.

All I've figured out is that everyone _started_ falling apart when they were young. Really young.

Sasuke was four or five when he began falling apart, looking at his older brother with adoration. His older brother who never had time for him.

Sakura was six or seven when she got a little broken up there in the head, inner Sakura and such.

I don't even want to know how little Shikamaru was when his mom first yelled and slapped him and his dad did nothing for him, only slunk away to get drunk. He held himself together the longest out of everyone, though he was by far the most cracked and broken when he finally went out.

For Neji it was when he first realized what being a branch member really meant.

For Hinata it was when she first realized what being clan heir meant.

I've never been told exactly what age, but I hear the Aburame are young when they receive their kikaichu (probably as infants), and that's when they start falling apart. They tell themselves it's a blessing, but they know as well as I do that nothing living inside of you, that people can't identify with, is a blessing.

For all jinchuuriki it's the moment that monster is sealed inside them and people look at them with fear and disgust. Gaara.

Temari and Kankuro I don't know too well, but for them it was probably when they had a little brother they were terrified of, but pretended to love because of their blood.

I don't like to think about when I started falling apart. I don't even like to think that I _am_ falling apart. But when I sit in my office at my desk, staring at an old mission report that wasn't handed to me by the person I sent, I know I've been falling apart all along. These mission reports that I keep in my drawer are proof of it.

What's more sickening than the mission reports in my drawer is that everyone I knew began falling apart when they were children, including myself. In this ruthless world, bad things happen.

Often.

Really often.

Probably too often.

And they happen to us as children, and us children fall apart.


	3. Round

_**Uchiha**_

It's really not Sasuke's fault he was born into such a messed up family. And it wasn't really his family, either, only his brother, Itachi.

I wonder how Itachi could've known how much Sasuke looked up to him and have still devoutly ignored him.

Sasuke had a brother complex, I think. He had a father complex, too, 'cause he was always trying to impress his dad by being as great as his brother. His superiority complex stemmed from his brother complex and father complex.

His mom wasn't a ninja, so I bet he barely even thought about her.

That was the way Sasuke always worked: if it wasn't stronger than him, it wasn't important.

Anyone would have been shaken if their entire clan were murdered. Even more shaken if it were their brother who did it. Completely rattled if they'd _seen_ it.

Poor Sasuke.

But he wasn't just shaken or rattled. He took it a step farther, and that step farther crushed whatever pieces of him there still were.

Sasuke was unstable, unreliable, unpredictable. He was a prodigy, a survivor, an avenger, a liability to the village. But he was kept because people thought he could change, thought he would grow out of his fits of anger and days of silence.

No-one checked up on him, living alone in the ruined Uchiha estate.

I visited once, after he'd left.

Sasuke wasn't just unstable, he was insane. Like everyone else was.

All over the walls he'd etched his brother's name, sometimes with a kunai, sometimes with his nails, a lot of times with blood. 'Itachi' wasn't the only word there. 'Must Avenge' s and 'Why?' s. A tiny little, 'I loved you...' in the corner.

Oh, he had a brother complex alright.

After that incident, he had an avenger complex and a seriously dark side, too.

Everyone knew that. Everyone knew he was a killer and he would stop at nothing to get his brother back. But they kept him in the village, hoping he would change and maybe go back to being just a little bit sane.

I remember the day I heard Sasuke'd came back. Everyone was really excited, but I was pissed.

What took him so long? When did his village become that insignificant to him?

If I hadn't been in the habit of lying to myself, I would've admitted that we'd never been significant to him, only his brother and his vengeance were important.

I was the second one to the gate, after Sakura.

Sasuke was stumbling in, holding something in either hand. In his right, Orochimaru's head. In the left, Itachi's.

His vengeance was completed.

We welcomed him and his insanity back. He was coerced into continuing the Uchiha bloodline and married to Hyuuga Hanabi, who was nineteen at the time, since Sharingan and Byakugan bloodlines are similar.

Once Hanabi was pregnant, he disappeared.

Sakura was the last one to talk to him.

She said, "He wanted to see his brother again."

Brother complex...

Insane bastard.


	4. The

_**Sakura**_

I don't think anyone knew about inner Sakura for a long while, 'cept for maybe Ino.

We did know about her obsession with Sasuke. She made that obvious.

But she was smart and she worked hard, so the chuunin and jounin overlooked her oddity.

It's not like ninja were supposed to be normal, anyways. It was good she could be so single-mindedly determined and dedicated, right?

The day Sasuke stumbled in through that gate and she raced to meet him first, I'm sure she got the surprise of a lifetime.

Though she must have known she was fooling herself to believe that he would come back whole. Sakura was smarter than that.

Instead, he came back dragging two bloodied heads.

Whatever warm greeting she'd rehearsed died on her lips, then.

And Sasuke trudged right past her glazed eyes and her gaping mouth, indifferent.

Because the bastard had done what he'd set out to do. Sakura didn't matter.

But Sasuke mattered to Sakura. He mattered more to her than he could have possibly mattered to anyone else. But Sakura was a strong girl. Probably even stronger than me.

It was about then that we began noticing inner Sakura.

She would be running my tests at the hospital, ranting about how I was always getting in trouble, when she would suddenly stop and start zoning out. It wasn't a lackadaisical type of zoning out, but more of a harsh, determined zoning out. Like she were concentrating real hard.

Normally, she would snap out of it within five to ten seconds and pick up wherever she'd left off.

Then she zoned out in the field for a minute, and someone died.

Sakura used to spend a lot of time milling around the streets of Konoha. Sometimes with Ino, sometimes with another kunoichi.

After Sasuke came back and she started zoning out, though, I didn't see her anymore.

Her parents requested surveillance of her. They wanted _that_ Sakura out of their life. They wanted _their_ Sakura back.

Didn't they have _their_ Sakura?

I think Sasuke made her fall apart, and I think he knew it and just didn't care.

I think Sakura knew he knew and didn't care.

Whatever the case, Sakura's inner self was getting out of control. Instead of zoning out, she flew into rages for no reason. During them, she was beyond reasoning with. The only thing to do was stay well out of her reach.

Sakura knew she was crazy. She knew it and she hated it with every fiber of her being. She hated that her inner self was so violent.

She never told anyone that it was she, not her inner self, who was depressed.

Suicidal.

The fact that she couldn't stand her inner self only egged her on. She wrote a very nice letter to her deceased Sasuke-kun and a few to her closest friends, mentors, and family, which were found neatly stacked beside her.

Mine was so drenched in blood that I _still_ can't read it.


	5. Ro

_**Sharingan**_

I think all Sharingan users must've been cursed (just look at what happened to Hanabi's child), but I wonder if Kakashi knew that before accepting his eye.

It was told Hatake Kakashi could mimic anything using his Sharingan, hence his title the Copy Ninja.

I never knew 'bout it directly, but Iruka whispered to me about Kakashi's Sharingan when he was gone. He leaned over and whispered, "That eye tore him apart, you know."

I didn't understand.

Apparently, jutsus weren't the only things his eye memorized. People. Places.

Deaths.

Kakashi's eye remembered every enemy, comrade, and friend it saw fall, and it replayed those memories for him, mockingly, when he laid down to sleep at night.

Iruka said Kakashi used to talk in his sleep.

I said, "Kakashi talked in the day, too. So what?"

Iruka only shook his head sadly and said that wasn't it. Kakashi used to talk to himself, to his eye.

I vaguely remember Kakashi's lips moving silently beneath his mask.

I guess he wasn't chewing gum. So much for Sakura's theory.

I guess it makes sense, though.

Kakashi was famous among the Konoha spooks, also known as ANBU, but he had his own spooks, too. The ghosts of every ended life he witnessed.

According to the few ANBU members still around who worked with him, he talked to his ghosts all the time. His eccentricities (a nicer term for his insanities) only bolstered his reputation, making him someone even ANBU crossed to the other side of the street when passing.

Out of respect for their captain, his ANBU subordinates looked the other way when he simpered to himself (and covered their ears when he shouted), so they never knew exactly what he said to that eye.

He was never apologizing.

Only pleading:

"I saw, I see...

"Just leave me be!"

On solo missions, doing god knows what for ANBU, he probably had full-blown fucking conversations with that eye.

However the conversations went, they weren't pleasant; he always stumbled back, the skin around his eye torn and bleeding, ever mouthing, "I saw, I see," over and over, "Just leave me be!"

After he got lost and collapsed a half-day's trek from the Konoha gates, Tsunade made sure he never went solo again.

Not more than two missions later, he was being half-carried back to the village, blinded by his bleeding eye, accompanying ANBU trying to ignore his captain's muttering.

For a long while this tactic work; send Kakashi out with some new ANBU schmuck, have him to the dirty work, and the new guy leads him back. It saved Kakashi's ass a fair few times, and it was good exposure for the new member.

A good number of ANBU rookies quit after their first mission with Kakashi.

After about a month or two, though, Kakashi's partner was killed on a mission to assassinate the remnants of the Kamizuru clan, a request from the dying Aburame Shibi without the knowledge of his clan.

His partner was dead, but Kakashi worked through the rest of the clan, killing every aged man and young child, his eye recording it all, and replaying it, overtime.

Kakashi did the only thing his broken mind could see fit: he clawed his eye out, shouting:

"I saw, I see!

"Just leave me be!"

The rush of deaths, the reminders, they must've stopped, because he sat down, holding his bleeding socket, in the middle of a dirt road. He didn't have to watch Obito offering him the eye with his dying breath, he didn't have to watch his own hands kill innocent civilians for ANBU, he didn't have to watch his friends and coworkers fall.

He laid down in the dirt, waiting to be carried back, because that was how it always worked.

Without the eye, he couldn't remember that his partner was dead.

We never saw his body. ANBU took care of it.


	6. sie,

_**Spirit of Youth**_

Gai and Lee were the closest I've ever seen a teacher and student.

No-one ever dared to suggest that the two were sane. They wouldn't even call them eccentric. Gai and Lee were outright insane.

But they didn't care, they kinda knew it already, and took comfort in the fact that they had each other, if no-one else.

Gai had always had problems remembering things. Old enemies would return for revenge on the Green Beast of Konoha and he would ask them, "Do I know you?" But after his Eternal Rival died, Gai began to forget a lot more.

He forgot what his summon was, he forgot he was a jounin. He forgot what his mission was (but Lee was there to remind him) and he forgot Neji's twentieth birthday (something Neji was eternally grateful for). On a solo mission not ten miles from Konoha, he forgot his way home; in fact, he forgot what home was.

Lee patiently reminded his sensei and things went on as always.

Lee never thought it was strange that his sensei was forgetting things. He just laughed, striking a Nice Guy pose, proclaiming that it was nothing to worry about.

Lee and Gai kept score of how many push-ups they had each done since they began training together. I always thought that was pretty stupid, since both of their numbers skyrocketed past the millions.

Gai forgot his number, then he forgot Lee's. Gai called Lee Kakashi and his Eternal Rival while sparring.

After that, he went to Tsunade and requested one last mission.

Lee came to me crying. He didn't understand what was- _had_- been happening to Gai-sensei.

Gai never came back from his mission, and I heard his dieing words were, "I will defeat you, Kakashi, my Eternal Rival!"

Lee had always trained insanely hard, pushed himself harder than anyone else I knew (except maybe Gai), but after his sensei died, he trained even harder. Even his teammates couldn't get him to stop.

I'd never figured him for it, but everyone else'd figured Lee insane for his training schedule, but after Gai died I began to agree with them. Lee spent all ungodly hours of the day training, until the dojo he'd built reeked of sweat and tears. Kiba once sniffed as Lee passed by and hissed to me that Lee smelled like blood, under all the sweat and tears.

Lee was training, and his mind was becoming a blank slate, kinda like Gai's. He thought of nothing but training.

After Gai's death, it wasn't unusual not to see Lee for two or three days consecutively, but when we didn't see him for almost a week and a half, we knew something was up.

Neji took it upon himself to check up on the youth down at his dojo, and Neji came back with nothing. No expression, no explanation, no Lee.

There's nothing but charred ground where Lee's dojo used to be.

There's nothing but ashes left of Lee, who killed himself training.


	7. Pock

_**Ino**_

Ino was never quite right. Between her cosmetic obsession, dieting, and being a kunoichi, she was spread pretty thin. I always thought she was a little psychotic.

But only a little bit, 'cuz really, we were all a little off up there in the head.

The Yamanaka's can all use their mind technique, but Ino was something else. Beyond the superficial issues she had, she was a little too good with her family technique.

When Ino was in others' minds, she picked up memories.

Poor Ino used it on Shikamaru once when they were sparring and picked up a few abusive childhood memories. She picked up a few of mine once, too. That must have sucked for her. It wasn't only us Konoha nin she got memories from, either. Outside of Konoha in the Ino-Shika-Chou formation so many memories brushed off on her she couldn't keep track of them anymore.

Ino spent a lot of time with her flowers. She was a little too... attached.

She believed they spoke; "Hanakotoba no kazukazu", the many words of flowers.

I once caught her talking to them. It was after the first chuunin exam and she was kneeling in the shop, picking out different colored flowers. Not for the life of me would I have approached her, but I listened.

She named them. She named them and crooned to them.

A flower for each memory, because she was having trouble sorting her memories from her acquired memories.

I guess it made a little sense to do that, but a week later when I walked by again they were in a vase and she was crooning to them again, babbling about something I know never happened to her. She didn't see me, but I saw her, and she poured something into the water and they wilted.

"Erase the memories, erase them all," she cooed as they crumbled, "All gone, all gone."

Ino was a little crazy.

The moment she made Chuunin, Tsunade-baa-chan started sending her on missions accompanied by ANBU operatives. No-one was supposed to know, but I keep those mission files in my drawer, now. I know.

More flowers from the Yamanaka shop disappeared.

Ino was never good enough to make ANBU, but she had an ability that would indefinitely help them. She was perfect for assassinations, because the way she did them, they really were suicides, no questions asked.

That was when she really cracked.

Because every time she killed herself (because really, it felt like she was killing herself even if it wasn't her body) those were the memories she dragged back to her real self, all the way back to Konoha. After three missions, she wasn't dragging herself back, anymore; the ANBU operative was dragging her back.

She thought she could culture her flowers into the memories, and she would nurture them until she knew they were (but really, they weren't). Then she'd kill them with poison.

"Erase the memories, erase them all.

All gone, all gone."

Her dad yelled at her for all the wasted flowers.

I've got the report in my desk, somewhere, and it's sickening that Tsunade-baa-chan accepted such a mission and gave it to someone like Ino.

Everyone knew she wasn't sane, flowers and such.

Assassinate an innocent toddler, only because the dad didn't want his wife to know he'd had a baby with a prostitute. Make it look like an accident, the report said, so Ino-toddler waddled into the kitchen and grabbed the handle of a pot of boiling water and dumped it on herself.

That night, sitting in her room in front of a large selection of flowers, she tore open the package of weed killer.

"Erase the memories, erase them all..."

And swallowed it.

"All gone, all gone."


	8. et

_**Potato Chips**_

Akimichi Chouji loved Yamanaka Ino. Akimichi Chouji also loved potato chips.

Akimichi Chouji was away on a month-long mission when Yamanaka Ino killed herself, and was devastated when he returned.

He locked himself in his apartment, and only on the first day of the third week was Shikamaru able to break in and drag his friend out.

Unlike most people, Chouji did not emerge from his home thin as a rod from lack of eating. Chouji was an eater by nature- he ate when he was angry, he ate when he was happy.

He ate when he was sad. Depressed.

So, Akimichi Chouji was fat. Well, fatter than he was before he knew Ino'd died.

The only place he would allow Shikamaru to take him was barbeque, and in later weeks, Ichiraku's.

At first no-one worried because, well, it was Chouji. Eating was his way of coping.

Then, I overheard Neji telling Shikamaru, "Your friend is so fat now that his chakra paths have been cut off. Do something about it."

Akimichi Chouji, one of the nicest guys I ever knew, was killing himself with food.

It wasn't just coping for him, it wasn't just obsession; it was a necessity.

Akimichi Chouji at when he was angry, when he was happy, when he was sad or depressed. He ate when he was called fat. And Ino'd always called him fat.

So, when Ino died, all he could think about was her, and he kept stumbling on memory after memory of times when she'd called him fat, or a pig, or a porker. And every time he remembered her stinging words, another bag of chips disappeared.

Eventually, he got so fat he couldn't get up off his couch, and Shikamaru would stay with him whenever he could, handing Chouji bag after bag after bag of chips, trying helplessly to stop his friend from thinking of Ino.

"I thought I told you to do something about it," Neji spat one day at the market, "Not make it worse."

"You did," Shikamaru grimaced, "But I can't deny him his potato chips."

Neji glared at him, said that he would see to feeding the Akimichi. Shikamaru was speculative, but decided it was for the best.

The next day, Neji hung his head in defeat. From then on, Shikamaru was the only one to look in on Chouji. Hyuuga Neji couldn't deny Chouji his chips.

So Chouji remained on his couch, remembering Ino, his lost love, and stuffing chips while Shikamaru watched silently. Neji reported to Asuma that now not only Chouji's chakra ways were cut off, but also his blood vessels. Asuma went through two packs of cigarettes that evening.

When Shikamaru didn't show up when summoned, I was sent to find him. First place I looked was Chouji's.

I found him, seated on the coffee table, watching the unmoving Chouji, slowly working his way through a bag of barbeque potato chips. His eyes slid over to me and he said;

"These were Chouji's favorite."


	9. Full

_**Smoke and Illusions**_

From the first time Kurenai cast a genjutsu, it appealed to her.

Supposedly, that was because her whole clan was genjutsu oriented.

But Kurenai was something different. Kurenai liked to fool herself with her own genjutsu. She would slip out of the house at night and down to the creek a half-mile away and perform entire magic shows for imaginary audiences, using her genjutsu.

She especially liked dissolving away in a flurry of pink cherry blossom petals. It made her feel pretty.

As she grew older and got better with her illusions, the imaginary audiences weren't so imaginary anymore. After becoming chuunin, she incorporated them into her genjutsu act, giving them the faces of her fellow chuunin.

When she reached jounin, she added a stage and a few assistants out of trees.

She met Asuma when she was a jounin, and it was like love at first sight.

She had to cut back on the length of her illusionary life at night to make room for him.

Asuma was actually pretty close to normal up until he hit chuunin, Kurenai discovered (he still was pretty normal, compared to most; just look at Kurenai, she used her genjutsu on herself to become a magician).

His first ever mission as a chuunin, Asuma had to kill four men and watched his comrade die.

His cell leader offered him a cigarette and a bottle of sake that evening. The sake wasn't ever very appealing to him, but he never quit smoking after that night.

Because he believed the ghosts of everyone he ever killed were in the plumes of smoke he blew. So where most ninja drank away their ghosts, Asuma puffed his away, mumbling to them around the butt of his cigarette how sorry he was.

Sometimes Kurenai walked in on him in such a state, sagged into the couch, eyes screwed up staring into the smoke, muttering. The first time it happened, she wordlessly sat beside him and watched the smoke tendrils. The routine never changed.

Asuma knew what his insanity was doing to him, but he didn't really understand it was insanity until it was too late. He told Kurenai he thought he could feel his lungs blackening and falling apart with every toxin-laden drag he took. But he couldn't stop, because he was still going on missions and he was still killing people. When Ino and Chouji were gone, he added them.

So he suffocated on the rest of his smoky ghosts.

After that, Kurenai did away with her childish illusion. Instead, she wrapped herself in such a perfect illusion of her and Asuma that she couldn't remember it wasn't real.

No-one ever believed they were sane- Asuma apologizing to his cigarette smoke and Kurenai living in her own illusion. Except for that, they were pretty normal. I guess.

Kiba, Hinata, and Shino tried to free her, but she died in her imaginary world. Tsunade couldn't save her and Asuma's unborn baby.

Because you can't live on illusionary happiness.


End file.
